80GI0«t)t 

oemtheat 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PENSIONS 


MARY  E.  RICHMOND 


Reprinted 

from 

THE  SURVEY 

March  1,  1913 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PENSIONS 

MARY  E.  RICHMOND 


ARGUMENTS  that  will  not  bear  critical 
examination  are  being  advanced  on  both 
sides  of  the  mothers’  pension  question. 
Wholesale  claims  that  every  need  is  now  ade¬ 
quately  provided  for  by  this  agency  or  by  that; 
solemn  general  warnings  about  the  dangers  of 
pauperism;  harrowing  instances  of  hardship 
with  most  of  the  facts  pertinent  to  the  subject 
under  discussion  omitted ;  statistics  from  sources 
unknown  or  discredited ;  startling  discoveries 
that  pension  plans  lean  to  Socialism,  or  that  their 
opponents  conspire  to  reduce  women’s  wages,  or 
to  increase  the  prestige  of  social  workers — all 
this  claptrap  should  be  brushed  aside.  Until  both 
sides  have  had  a  chance  to  be  heard,  until  both 
have  brought  forward  their  evidence,  the  case 
is  not  settled,  and  the  effort  to  settle  it  by  stam¬ 
peding  our  state  legislatures  can  only  cause  delay. 
If,  for  instance,  bills  are  passed  as  a  means  of 
emptying  the  children’s  institutions,  but  are  so 
framed  as  only  to  increase  their  population  in 
the  long  run,  it  is  better  to  hear  what  competent 
witnesses  have  to  say  about  this  before  than 
after  legislating.  Competent  witnesses  are  often 
wrong,  it  is  true,  but  only  by  witnesses  more 
competent,  with  facts  still  more  pertinent  and 
unassailable,  can  they  be  so  proven.  And  if  we 
legislate  that  mothers  shall  remain  at  home  with 
their  children,  as  we  are  now  doing,  in  some 
states,  without  giving  so  much  as  a  thought  to 
the  experience  of  those  who  know  most  about 
home  work,  and  the  probable  industrial  effect 
upon  it  of  a  state  subsidy,  we  may  be  vindicat¬ 
ing  our  principles  and  “standing  up  for  mother¬ 
hood,”  but  we  are  doing  it  at  the  expense  of  the 
very  group  we  aim  to  help. 

Decidedly,  the  time' to  look  about  us,  to  com¬ 
pare  experiences  and  reason  together,  is  now, 
and  the  time  to  legislate  is  after  we  have  done 
this.  Many  social  workers,  though  not  nearly 
all,  have  no  faith  in  any  one  remedy  applied 
wholesale  by  statute  to  the  ganglion  of  evils 
that  mothers’  pensions  are  supposed  to  do  away 
with.  As  campaigners,  this  places  them  at  a 
disadvantage.  A  single  remedy,  easily  explained 
and  picturesquely  defended,  makes  an  appeal  that 
they  cannot  hope  to  make.  But,  as  has  been 
shown  in  more  than  one  legislative  hearing  on 
this  subject  already,  the  people  who  live  close 
to  the  facts  and  are  in  the  habit  of  thinking 
about  them  constructively  have  nothing  to  lose 
by  conference  and  by  discussion.  The  Illinois 


Funds  to  Parents  Act  was  passed  in  1911  with¬ 
out  discussion ;  and  now,  when  all  its  friends, 
from  Judge  Pinckney  down,  are  striving  to 
amend  it,  some  other  states,  also  without  discus¬ 
sion,  are  adopting  it  verbatim  in  its  unamended 
form.  This  isji  wasteful  way  of  getting  forward. 
Surely  experience  counts  for  something,  and  that 
cause  is  weak  whose  advocates  close  their  minds 
To  the  lessons  of  experience. 

On  what  central  facts  are  we  all  agreed  and 
on  which  do  we  differ?  We  are  all  agreed,  1 
think,  thaU  famBi.es -are- being-broken  up  which 
should  be  kept  together  ;  that  mothers  are  being 
overworked  with  disastrous  results  to  themselves 
and  to  their  children;  and  that  inadequate  food 
and  clothing,  together  with  overcrowding  in  the 
home,  are  physically  and  morally  handicapping 
the  children  there.  We  are  further  agreed  that 
it  is  far  more  important  to  remedy  these  condi¬ 
tions,  and  to  remedy  them  in  a  way  that  will 
prevent  their  recurrence,  than  to  vindicate  our 
preference  for  private  initiative  or  public  initia¬ 
tive,  for  the  word  “relief”  or  the  word  “pension.” 
Thus  far  we  should  be  able  to  go  along  together 
without  disagreement. 

We  are  going  to  differ  about  the  causes  of 
these  bad  conditions  inevitably,  and  to  differ  also 
about  the  series  of  remedies  that  must  be  inaug¬ 
urated  promptly  while  we  continue  to  hammer  at 
causes — to  push  the  death-rate  lower,  to  punish 
exploitation  in  all  its  forms,  to  segregate  those 
who  should  not  propagate  their  kind.  Never¬ 
theless,  frank  discussion  helps — discussion,  that 
is,  which  leaves  our  opponent  some  standing 
ground  and  does  not  impugn  nis  motives. 

Without  further  preamble,  let  me  attempt  to 
give,  as  my  tentative  contribution  to  such  a  con¬ 
ferring  together,  some  of  the  arguments  that 
seem  to  me  to  be  related  to  this  question. 

The  Institution  Argument 

The  claim  is  freely  made  that  mothers’  pen¬ 
sions  would  empty  the  institutions,  but  if,  in 
cities  giving  pensions  to  mothers  on  a  large  scale, 
the  children’s  institution  population  should  con¬ 
tinue  to  increase,  then,  whatever  the  cause,  some 
other  remedy  will  have  to  be  found  for  this  evil, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  an  evil.  If  the  per  capita  sub¬ 
sidy  system  prove  to  be  one  of  the  causes,  can 
a  per  capita  subsidy  to  the  family  be  the  remedy  ? 

Analysis  of  institution  populations  would  re¬ 
veal,  I  believe,  the  following  reasons  besides  "pov- 


•J 


9 


3 


^  A.X'S'OO. 


U^erty  only”  for  commitment:  Death  of  mother, 
j  illness  of  mother  or  child,  moral  disabilities  of 
Omother,  desire  of  both  parents  to  be  relieved  of 
/care  until  child  can  earn,  need  of  specialized 
pare  of  child  which  the  home  cannot  supply.  A 
certain  proportion  of  the  children,  a  proportion 
.-^varying  greatly  in  different  places,  come  from 
nomes  that  should  never  have  been  established. 
(PAs  we  know  more  of  what  it  means  to  a  child 
f  — to  be  not  only  well  cared  for  but  well  born — 
to  have,  that  is,  physically  and  morally  sound 
parents —  the  more  carefully  we  feel  like  scrutin¬ 
izing  any  scheme  which  involves  the  possibility 
of  making  children  (by  means  direct  or  indirect) 
a  financial  asset  to  parents  of  unsound  stock. 

The  foregoing  statements  do  not  mean  that 
we  should  not  immediately  take  steps  to  see  that 
all  children  are  kept  in  their  own  homes  when 
they  can  become  good  citizens  there.  I  believe 
that  the  number  now  being  removed  is  grossly 
overestimated,  however,  and  that  an  equally  im¬ 
portant  if  not  more  important  next  step,  as  re¬ 
gards  the  number  of  children  involved,  would 
be  the  adoption  of  much  better  standards  of  care 
for  the  children  that  are  in  institutions  and  in 
charge  of  placing  out  agencies  at  public  expense. 

The  Overwork  Argument 

women  upon  whom  work  conditions  press 
the  hardest  today  will  not  be  reached  by  the  pen¬ 
sions  now  proposed.  The  widow  or  the  wife 
i  whose  husband  is  away  or  permanently  disabled 
yis  at  least  relieved  of  the  double  burden  of  wage¬ 
earning  and  child-bearing.  In  helping  that 
widow  and  that  wife,  we  must  be  careful  to  put 
m©-zfurther  barriers  in  the  way  of  the  social 
workers -who  are  striving  to  give  all_women  a 
more  dignified,  better  organized,  and  better  safe¬ 
guarded  industrial  status.  But  six  of  the  moth¬ 
ers’  pension  bills  on  my  desk  would  put  up  such 
a  barrier,  though  quite  unintentionally,  for  they 
prohibit  the  beneficiary  from  work  outside  th£ 
home  altogether  or  for  more  than  one  day  each 
week,  but  do  not  provide  complete  support.  In 
discussing  this  aspect  of  pension  legislation  with 
one  of  the  best  authorities  on  women’s  work,  I 
pointed  out  that  these  provisions  might  tend  to 
y  subsidize  the  sweated  industries  in  the  large 
cities.  But  I  was  told  that  the  measures  would 
I  be  equally  dangerous  in  less  populous  places ; 
that  no  home  was  remote  enough  from  the  freight 
office  and  the  parcels  post  to  be  safe  from  such 
exploitation. 

It  will  be  suggested  that  the  remedy  for  this 
is  complete  support  by  the  state,  and  the  prohi- 
*  bition  of  all  work  for  wages,  whether  in  the  home 
or  outside.  This  would  be  better  than  the  pres¬ 
ent  proposals,  but  in  some  of  our  cities,  especially 
in  their  foreign  quarters,  the  mothers  who  have 
always  been  wage-earners  resent  enforced  home¬ 
keeping  and  grow  very  restless  under  the  nerv¬ 


ous  strain  of  it.  Glasgow  tried  the  experiment 
in  its  “special  roll”  for  the  relief  of  widows  with 
young  children,  and  it  records  that  “so  many  of 
the  women  are  devoid  of  domestic  and  other  in¬ 
terests  that  work  for  wages  is  a  positive  safe¬ 
guard.”  But  they  should  be  taught,  it  may  be 
suggested.  Here  we  have  the  idea  of  personal 
service  and  individual  care  from  which  our  pen¬ 
sion  friends  are  so  eager  to  get  away. 

Pensions  as  Relief  and  as  Reward 
I  have  said  that  our  preference  for  the  words 
“relief”  or  “pension”  should  not  permanently 
divide  us,  but  the  ideas  behind  those  words,  as 
I  pointed  out  in  a  recent  Survey,1  are  quite 
distinct.  It  was  impossible  then  and  will  be  im¬ 
possible  now  to  take  up  all  the  arguments  for 
and  against  new  pension  measures,  but  at  the 
risk  of  seeming  to  digress  unduly,  I  should  like 
to  make  myself  clear  on  this  one  aspect  of  the 
question,  for  it  has  a  very  important  bearing, 
I  think,  upon  this  year’s  legislative  campaign. 
In  so  far  as  the  words  “relief”  and  “charity”  have 
undemocratic  connotations,  I  regret  it,  and 
would  welcome  substitutes  for  them,  but  the  word 
“pension,”  to  Americans  especially,  implies  three 
things  that  destroy  its  usefulness  as  a  substi¬ 
tute:  First,  it  implies  payment  Hor  a  service 
rendered  in  the  past;  second,  it  implies,  without 
any  reference  to  the  needs  or  the  characteristics 
of  the  individual  receiving  it,  a  fixed  rate  of 
payment:  third,  it  implies  no  responsibility  for 
what  happens.  Pension  advocates  are  now  claim¬ 
ing,  quite  logically  as  it  seems  to  me,  that  “one 
hundred  cents  out  of  every  dollar”  should  go 
to  the  mother,  thus  cutting  away  at  one  stroke 
all  careful  choice  of  pensioners  in  the  first  place, 
and  all  personal  service  to  the  children  of  the 
household  later  on. 

/  A  case  could  be  made  out  for  a  service  pension 
to  all  mothers,  rich  and  poor,  at  fixed  rates,  and 
a  case  could  be  made  out  for  the  further  de¬ 
velopment  of  the  relief  measures  that  are  now 
inadequate,  whether  public  or  private.  But  the 
mixture  and  confusion  of  the  two  ideas  of  ser¬ 
vice  pensions  and  relief  grants  will  make  noth¬ 
ing  but  trouble.  It  is  a  confusion  that  has  cost 
our  country  dear  already.  The  same  mixture 
of  motive  appears  again  and  again  in  the  records 
of  soldiers’  pension  legislation — now  it  is  pay¬ 
ment  of  a  debt,  and  again  it  is  charity;  now 
the  pension  roll  is  a  “roll  of  honor,”  and  again 
it  is  a  thing  that  must  be  kept  private  because 
the  veterans  are  sensitive  about  its  publication. 
It  will  not  be  time  wasted  to  turn  aside  long 
enough  to  see  what  has  been  happening  to  United 
States  pensions.  It  is  true  that  most  of  the 
mothers’  compensation  acts  are  only  proposing  to. 
substitute  state  for  local  funds,  but  federal  pen¬ 
sions  to  mothers  have  already  been  suggested,, 
though  not  very  seriously  as  yet. 

’See  The  Survey,  February  15,  1013,  p.  665. 


m 


4 


Soldiers’  Pensions 

The  basal  principle  of  earlier  pension  legisla¬ 
tion,  as  explained  by  Glasson  in  his  careful 
study,1  was  the  granting  of  pensions  for  “injur¬ 
ies  received  or  disease  contracted”  in  the  line 
of  duty,  or  on  account  of  death  directly  re¬ 
sulting.  No  American  can  quarrel  with  that  or 
with  the  desire  to  provide  for  the  old  age  of  act¬ 
ual  veterans;  but  what  are  we  to  say  of  the  piece¬ 
meal  legislation,  ever  widening  the  scope  and 
breaking  down  the  safeguards  of  these  conserva¬ 
tive  provisions,  which  has  saddled  us  with  the 
burden  pictured  on  the  next  page?  Now,  in  this 
year  of  grace  1913,  when  three-fourths  of  the  sol¬ 
diers  of  the  Civil  War  are  in  their  graves,  we  are 
spending  more  than  we  ever  spent  before;  we 
are  spending  annually  on  an  army  mustered  out 
of  service  nearly  fifty  years  ago  three-fourths 
as  much  as  Germany  spends  on  the  second  larg¬ 
est  standing  army  in  the  world.  Exclusive  of 
administrative  expense,  our  pension  appropria¬ 
tion  for  the  current  year  is  $164,500,000. 

When  Garfield  reported  to  Congress  thirty- 
five  years  ago  a  pension  budget  nearly  one-fifth 
the  size  of  the  present  one,  he  did  so  with  the 
apology  that  this  would  be  the  maximum,  and 
that  in  the  natural  order,  of  things  the  sum 
would  gradually  decrease.  What  accounts  for 
the  quintupled  increase  since  Garfield’s  budget 
was  adopted?  Not  the  Spanish-American  War, 
whose  pensioners  are  even  now  less  than  three 
and  a  half  per  cent  of  the  total.  Not  bad  ad¬ 
ministration  at  Washington,  for  the  figures  have 
mounted  during  good  and  during  bad  pension  ad¬ 
ministrations  alike.  Not  deliberate  fraud,  for 
though  there  has  been  much  of  this,  especially 
during  the  years  ’66  to  ’78  when  pension  attorneys 
were  most  shameless,  the  number  of  pensioners 
actually  decreased  in  those  years  nevertheless.  Not 
even  selfish  special  interests  that  played  upon 
the  country’s  generous  feeling  for  the  soldier 
account  for  the  increase,  though  it  is  true  that 
the  situation  has  been  used  by  these.  On  the 
whole,  it  has  been  honest  people  who  have  been 
betrayed  into  this  unprecedented  raid  upon  the 
people’s  treasury,  and  it  has  been  the  honest 
sentiment  of  the  country  that  has  betrayed  them. 
Many  of  the  young  men  who  came  out  of  the 
War  of  the  Rebellion  able  and  anxious  to  make 
their  own  way  had  no  thought  of  seeking  a  gov¬ 
ernment  pension  until  it  came  to  them  fourteen 
years  after  the  war  in  the  overwhelmingly  tempt¬ 
ing  guise  of  a  large  check  for  arrears. 

This  was  by  the  act  of  1879.  An  act  of  1890 
still  further  extended  these  arrear  payments  to 
all  discharged  soldiers,  whether  disabled  or  not, 
provided  they  were  incapable  of  earning  a  living 
by  manual  labor.  But  the  newer  legislation  did 

’See  History  of  Military  Pension  Legislation  In  the 
United  States.  By  William  Henry  Glasson.  Columbia 
University  Press,  1000.  See  also  Publication  No.  331 
of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science 


not  develop  instead  into  “a  dignified  form  of 
relief”  for  the  indigent,  “for  it  made  no  inquiry 
regarding  the  soldier’s  property  or  income.”  In 
fact,  after  the  demand  for  pensions  had  been 
artificially  stimulated,  the  cost  of  sifting  the  just 
demand  from  the  unjust  was  almost  prohibitive, 
and  the  process,  moreover,  became  increasingly 
unpopular.  Some  of  the  later  laws  put  a  direct 
premium  upon  perjury,  and  perjury  there  was 
in  plenty. 

Eloquence — floods  of  it — addressed  to  the  warm 
sentiment  of  the  country  toward  the  old  soldier 
filled  the  pages  of  our  Congressional  Record. 
These  pages  read  very  like  the  reports  now 
coming  to  us  from  legislatures  and  mothers’  con¬ 
gresses,  as  the  following  examples  will  show: 

• 

From  an  address  on  mothers’  pensions  before 
the  Congress  of  Mothers  at  Washington,  D.  C., 
quoted  from  the  Texas  Motherhood  Magazine, 
November,  1912:  “The  state  is  a  parent,  and  as 
a  wise  and  gentle  and  kind  and  loving  parent 
should  beam  down  upon  each  child  alike.  At  the 
knee  of  this  great,  just,  loving  mother  or  father, 
no  child  should  beg  in  vain.  The  bounties  of 
opportunity  and  reward  should  flow  therefrom 
freely  and  gladly  into  each  life  upon  this  fair 
continent.  It  is  not  for  you  and  me  to  struggle 
and  travail  under  the  masks  of  institutions  of 
charity  and  benevolent  organization,  that  the 
children  of  this  parent  may  have  light  and  love. 
From  the  fountain  head— THE  STATE — all 
benefits  should  issue.  We,  the  mothers  of  the 
land,  should  go  in  a  body  and  make  the  appeal 
for  what  we  wish,  then  stand  aside  and  rejoice 
as  we  see  our  desires  expressed — just  gifts  given 
by  a  loving  father,  received  equally  by  the  chil¬ 
dren.” 

From  a  speech  in  favor  of  mothers’  pensions 
before  the  Indiana  legislature  by  one  of  its 
number,  quoted  from  the  Indianapolis  Star  for 
January  28,  1913:  “We  make  an  awful  mistake 
when  we  assume,  as  often  we  do,  that  we  can 
add  to  or  take  away  from  a  mother’s  love,  be¬ 
cause  a  mother’s  love  is  a  part  of  the  mechanism 
of  the  soul,  and  it  receives  no  abridgement  from 
any  known  condition.  It  is  a  jeweled  diadem 
placed  upon  the  brow  of  a  finite  creature  that 
the  world  may  honor  and  obey.  We  know  it  to 
be  imperishable,  because  it  bears  the  impress  of 
an  undying  perfection,  and  it  is  cherished  as 
life’s  chiefest  beatitude,  wielding  empire  over 
the  domain  of  human  tenderness.” 

From  a  speech  on  the  “dollar  a  day”  pension 
bill  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  quoted  from 
the  Congressional  Record,  December  12,  1911 
(pension  disbursements  for  that  year  $157,325,- 
160)  :  “Mr.  Chairman,  section  3,  in  my  opinion,  is  a 
load  upon  this  bill.  .  (Applause.)  It  closes  the  door 
of  hope  to  the  old  war  veteran  whose  frugality 
and  industry  since  the  war  have  given  him  an 
annual  income  of  a  thousand  dollars  or  more. 
In  effect,  it  is  a  punishment  to  him  because  of  his 
thrift  since  the  war.  rather  than  a  reward  be¬ 
cause  of  his  faithful  servitude  to  his  country 


5 


. 

I 

[during  the  dark  clays  of  the  Civil  War.  It  is 
an  unjust  discrimination  which  ought  not  to  be 
made,  and  one  which  this  House  can  not  afford 
to  sanction.  .  .  . 

“Mr.  Chairman,  .  .  .  the  true  friend  of  the 

soldiers  is  the  man  who  stands  for  the  framing 
of  a  meritorious  bill  upon  the  broad  basis  of  re¬ 
lief  to  the  men  whose  services  blotted  out  the 


Mason  and  Dixon  line,  made  certain  the  Union 
of  these  States,  and  sealed  forever  the  destiny 
of  this  Republic,  and  after  such  a  bill  is  drafted, 
works  industriously  for  its  early  passage.  Mr. 
Chairman,  I  am  glad  to  say  that  this  House 
bristles  with  such  men  on  both  sides  of  this 
Chamber — men  whose  hearts  are  earnestly  en¬ 
listed  in  a  most  noble  cause.” 


Dollars. 

$165,000,000 

160,000,000 

155,000,000 

150,000,000 

145,000,000 

140,000,000 

135,000,000 

130,000,000 

125,000,000 

120,000,000 

115,000,000 

110,000,000 

105,000,000 

100,000,000 

95,000,000 

90,000,000 

85,000,000 

80,000,000 

75,000,000 

70,000,000 

65,000,000 

60,000,000 

55-,000,000 

50,000,000 

A 

k 

* 

— 

45,000,000 

- 

4fi  firm  firm 

*V,VVV,VW 

35,000,000 

30  OOO  OOO 

25,000,000 

5>o  onri  firm 

r 

/ 

m  firm  firm  1 

/ 

10,000,000  j— 

5.000.000  L 

T 

— iyi3 

—1910 

—1905 

—1900 

—1895 

—1890 

—1885 

—1880 

—1875 

—1870 

—1866 

THE  LADDER  UPON  WIIICH  SOLDIERS’  PENSIONS  HAVE  CLIMBED 

The  Congress  still  sitting  as  this  magazine  goes  to  press  has  reported  out  of  committee  pension  bills 
which  would  send  this  ladder  up  to  the  $180,000,000  mark  If 
the  estimates  published  are  correct. 


i 


Side  by  side  with  the  development  of  general 
pension  legislation  there  had  grown  up  a  system 
of  special  pension  acts.  Congressmen  pleaded 
for  more  liberal  legislation  in  order  that  they 
might  be  relieved  of  the  intolerable  pressure  of 
these  private  pension  bills,  of  which  nearly  36,000 
had  been  passed.  But  they  sought  a  remedy  that 
only  increased  the  evil.  In  the  closing  days  of 
the  Sixty-first  Congress,  in  February,  1911,  these 
personal  bills  were  being  introduced  “at  the 
rate  of  two  hundred  per  day.” 

The  size  of  our  pension  expenditures,  which 
have  amounted  to  more  than  $4,129,000,000  for 
Civil  War  pensions  alone,  is  not,  in  itself,  an  in¬ 
dictment  of  the  system,  if  it  is  clear  that  the 
money  has  been  and  is  being  well  spent,  and  that 
it  is  bringing  better  returns  to  all  the  people  of 
the  United  States  than  any  substitute  expendi¬ 
tures  could  bring.  No  one  who  has  lived  in 
America  during  these  fifty  years  can  fail  to  know 
of  many  cases  in  which  a  Civil  War  pension  has 
been  a  great  blessing,  and  has  been  of  such 
definite  benefit  to  the  families  as  to  benefit  the 
community  also;  but  the  more  kinds  of  people 
we  know  and  the  more  intinmcely  we  know  them, 
the  more  certain  we  are  to  have  also  encountered 
cases  of  degeneracy  either  induced  or  fostered 
by  pensions.  The  rolls  are  secret,  and  no  study 
has  ever  been  made  of  the  effects  of  soldiers’ 
pensions  upon  family  life,  of  their  relation  to 
social  efficiency  on  the  one  hand  or  to  social  in¬ 
efficiency  on  the  other. 

As  to  the  positive  evils  that  are  matters  of 
public  knowledge,  I  do  not  quote  William  Bayard 
Hale  or  Charles  Francis  Adams,  for,  irrefutable 
as  many  of  their  items  of  evidence  are,  these 
authorities  may  be  regarded  as  taking  an  extreme 
view — I  turn  again  to  Glasson,  who  is  most  mod¬ 
erate  in  all  of  his  conclusions.  He  recognizes 
fully  our  obligation  to  all  who  have  been  handi¬ 
capped  by  actual  military  service,  and  to  those 
directly  dependent  upon  them ;  he  might  also,  in 
a  country  without  old  age  pensions,  concede  the 
justice  of  provision  for  the  aged  veteran.  But 
he  finds  that  we  have  lowered  the  standard  of 
morality  and  patriotism  among  our  volunteer  sol¬ 
diers;  that  we  have  fostered  fraud;  that  we  have 
led  honest  people  to  imagine  disabilities;  that 
we  have  pensioned  the  affluent  on  account  of  dis¬ 
abilities  in  no  way  connected  with  military  ser¬ 
vice  ;  and  that  youth  has  been  wedded  to  old  age 
for  the  sake  of  the  widow’s  allowance.  “The 
investigator,”  he  adds,  “must,  at  times,  turn  from 
the  record  in  disgust.” 

Glasson  is  a  hopeful  man.  In  his  first  pension 
study,  the  one  of  1900,  he  expresses  the  belief 
that  pension  legislation  will  cease  to  be  a  ques¬ 
tion  of  party  advantage,  as  the  voting  strength 
of  the  Grand  Army  decreases.  That  was  thir¬ 
teen  years  ago,  and  more  than  a  hundred  and 


thirty-three  thousand  pensioners  have  dropped 
from  the  rolls  since.  But  'what  is  Congress  still 
doing?  If  this  too  extended  summary  of  pension 
administration  is  regarded  as  irrelevant  and  as 
an  appeal  to  the  history  of  other  times  and  other 
manners,  let  us  turn  to  the  Congress  which  is 
still  sitting  as  I  write.  It  passed  in  1912  a  new 
law  that  sends  our  pension  expenditures  to  a 
higher  point  than  they  have  ever  reached  before, 
and  is  now  engaged  in  sending  them,  by  more 
bills,  still  higher. 

One  of  the  difficulties  encountered  by  the  ad¬ 
vocates  of  universal  peace  is  that  every  large 
expenditure  in  preparation  for  war  helps  to 
create  a  class  in  the  nation  who  are  specially 
interested  in  making  these  expenditures  still 
larger.  Give  any  considerable  group  a  capital¬ 
ized  interest  in  one  kind  of  legislation,  let  that 
interest  find  and  join  hands  with  a  generous  pub¬ 
lic  sentiment,  and  then  see  all  the  seekers  of 
special  privilege  of  whatever  kind  rally  to  the 
aid  of  both.  This  is  why  the  tide  of  pensions  is 
always  at  flood. 

There  is  another  aspect  of  the  pension  ques¬ 
tion,  however.  Veterans  are  a  diminishing  class 
unless  we  have  another  big  war;  not  so  with 
mothers.  The  point  of  this  comparison  between 
mothers’  and  soldiers’  pensions — a  comparison 
which  did  not  originate  with  me — is  that  grants 
to  voters,  or  to  those  who  may,  perhaps,  soon 
become  such,  tend  to  mount  up  and  up,  with¬ 
out  any  assurance  to  the  state  of  an  adequate 
return.  The  phrases  “endowment  of  mother¬ 
hood,”  “funds  to  parents,”  “mothers’  compensa¬ 
tion,”  are  already  being  taken  up  by  shrewd 
politicians  who  may  give  them  a  significance 
and  a  power  of  popular  attraction  that  their 
originators  never  intended.  These  latter  are 
rubbing  the  lamp  industriously  without  any  con¬ 
ception  of  the  temper  of  the  genie  soon  to  ap¬ 
pear. 

Constructive  Statesmanship  Is  Delayed 

Let  us  ask  ourselves  what  constructive  pol¬ 
icies  now  well  thought  out  could  easily  be  post¬ 
poned  indefinitely  by  a  new  flood  of  pension 
eloquence  and  a  new  series  of  pension  grants. 
Far  as  we  are  from  any  immediate  prospect  of 
a  general  pension  for  mothers,  we  are  no  farther 
than  the  legislators  of  ’62  and  ’66  and  the  years 
succeeding  were  from  spending,  as  in  some  years 
since  we  have,  97.9  per  cent  of  our  total  internal 
revenue  upon  pensions. 

The  heaviest  cost  may  be  in  the  further  post¬ 
ponement  of  constructive  health  measures. 
Take,  for  example,  the  costliest  disease  and  the 
costliest  defect  that  afflict  society  today — take 
tuberculosis  and  feeble-mindedness.  We  know 
what  to  do  about  both  of  them,  but  we  are  not 
doing  it.  We  have  decreased  the  tuberculosis 
death-rate  in  New  York  city,  but  we  are  very 


:ar  indeed  from  having  the  disease  under  social 
control.  We  have  known  for  a  long  time  that 
he  segregation  -of  advanced  cases  is  indispens¬ 
able,  for  instance,  but  we  still  follow  the  line 
of  least  resistance  by  treating  them  at  home  in¬ 
stead.  If  the  most  careful  estimates  available 
mean  anything,  the  only  way  to  secure  social 
control  of  tuberculosis  in  the  United  States  is  to 
increase  five  times  over  our  present  rate  of  ex¬ 
penditure  upon  care  outside  the  home.  The 
bearing  of  this  upon  pension  problems  is  shown 
by  the  percentage  of  dependent  widows  who  lost 
their  husbands  from  this  particular  preventable 
disease.  Out  of  985  records  of  such  widows  re¬ 
cently  studied  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation, 
799  gave  the  cause  of  the  husband’s  death.  In 
29  per  cent  of  these  it  was  tuberculosis. 

Very  conservative  estimates  place  the  number 
of  feeble-minded  in  the  United  States  at  200,000, 
but  recent  students  of  the  subject  believe  that 
300,000  would  be  nearer  the  real  number.  Here 
is  another  group  for  whom  home  care  is  a  fail¬ 
ure,  but  only  20,000  are  in  institutions  for  the 
feeble-minded.  The  segregation  for  life,  or  at 
least  during  the  child-bearing  age,  of  a  whole 
generation  of  the  feeble-minded  would  bring  this 
terrible  curse  under  social  control. 

The  interesting  fact  is  that  we  apparently  have 
already  wasted  enough  money  on  soldiers’  pen¬ 
sions  to  do  both  of  these  things — not  to  eradicate 
every  case'  of  tuberculosis  or  feeble-mindedness, 
for  that  is  not  going  to  be  possible,  but  to  bring 
both  of  these  scourges  under  subjection  and 
make  them  almost  negligible  quantities.  We 
could  do  this,  I  believe  (provided  the  custodial 
and  supervisory  powers  granted  were  made  com¬ 
mensurate  with  the  expenditure)  for  a  billion 
dollars  less  than  has  been  unwisely  spent  for  pen¬ 
sions. 

The  basis  of  this  estimate,  which  is  only  of  the 
roughest  and  most  tentative  kind,  of  course,  is 
as  follows:  If  the  natural  decline  in  soldiers’ 
pensions  shown  for  the  years  1871  to  1879  is 
projected  to  the  present  year,  we  get  an  esti¬ 
mated  pension  disbursement  of  $11,890,000  for 
the  fiscal  year  1913,  and  proportionate  amounts 
for  the  intervening,  years.  These  may  be  re¬ 
garded  as  the  normal  Civil  War  pensions.  Taken 
together,  they  amount  to  $680,590,000.  Add  to 
this  the  pensions  granted  on  account  of  the  war 
with  Spain  and  in  the  Philippines,  $38,114,000. 
We  may  then  assume  that  pensions  to  soldiers 
not  otherwise  provided  for,  beyond  the  age  of 
sixty-five,  are  legitimate,  purely  as  old  age  pen¬ 
sions,  and  for  such  payments  add  a  billion  dol¬ 
lars  more.  If  we  now  deduct  the  sum  of  all  of 
these  items,  $1,718,704,000,  from  the  $4,106,585,- 
000  actually  spent  on  pensions  during  these  years, 
we  have  still  a  total  unnecessary  expenditure 
of  $2,387,881,000. 


Only  a  small  part  of  this  money  actually 
could  have  been  spent  on  either  of  the  prevent¬ 
ive  campaigns  named,  because  science  had  not 
discovered  and  social  workers  had  not  fully 
worked  out  the  details  of  care  or  of  prevention. 
But  if  the  same  rate  of  unnecessary  pension  ex¬ 
penditure  were  to  continue  (there  were  508,812 
applications  for  United  States  pensions  or  for 
increases  in  the  same  in  the  year  ending  June 
30,  1912),  or  if  our  plans  for  cure  and  preven¬ 
tion  had  been  ready  earlier,  a  portion  of  this 
money  could  have  been  spent  in  a  ten  years’ 
campaign  for  the  control  of  tuberculosis,  and 
another  portion  for  a  thirty  years’  campaign  for 
the  control  of  feeble-mindedness. 

The  highest  estimate  available  (Easton’s) 
places  the  cost  of  control  of  tuberculosis  in  New 
York  city,  where  control  is  peculiarly  difficult, 
at  less  than  $50,000,000.  Let  us  say,  then,  $45,- 
000,000  in  New  York  city,  with  its  10,000  deaths 
from  tuberculosis  per  year,  and  multiply  that  by 
15.5  for  the  country,  which  has  155,000  deaths 
per  year  from  the  same  cause,  according  to  Ir¬ 
ving  Fisher’s  estimate,  and  we  have  a  total  cost 
for  social  control  of  approximately  $700,000,000. 
This  is  probably  an  estimate  which  could  be 
much  lowered  by  good  social  and  medical  engi¬ 
neering. 

The  feeble-minded  must  be  cared  for  longer — 
for  thirty  years,  but  their  care  is  not  so  costly, 
and  the  most  important  single  factor  is  the  un¬ 
cared-for  woman  of  child-bearing  age.  As¬ 
suming  that  one-third  of  the  total  300,000  of 
both  sexes  do  not  need  custodial  care,  and  esti¬ 
mating  school  care,  exclusive  of  buildings,  at 
$175  per  year  for  seven  years,  and  adult  care  at 
$100  per  year  (according  to  Johnson’s  plan  for 
partial  self-support)  for  twenty-three  years,  we 
have  the  enormous  total  of  $705,000,000.  But 
from  this  it  is  fair  to  deduct  the  cost  of  caring 
for  the  20,000  already  in  institutions  for  the 
feeble-minded,  and  the  cost  for  the  estimated 
number  of  47,000  feeble-minded  now  in  alms¬ 
houses,  insane  asylums  and  prisons  and  reform¬ 
atories.  This  leaves  an  estimated  cost  of  $408,- 
750,000  for  care,  to  which  should  be  added 
$133,000,000  for  buildings.  This  gives  a  total 
estimated  cost  for  the  social  control  of  feeble¬ 
mindedness  of  $541,750,000. 

Deducting  the  estimated  cost  of  both  tubercu¬ 
losis  and  feeble-mindedness  controlled  from  the 
estimated  unnecessary  payments  in  pensions,  we 
still  find  $1,146,000,000  remaining  for  the  social 
control  of  other  preventable  diseases,  and  of 
such  other  social  maladjustments  as  can  be  at¬ 
tacked  from  many  sides  at  once  by  government 
activities. 

In  all  our  social  planning  nothing  must  be 
done  which  will  deprive  us  of  this  power  of 


8 


attack  on  many  sides.  It  is  useless  to  spend 
large  sums  in  an  unrelated,  piecemeal  way.  We 
need  a  combination  of  high  administrative 
standards  and  of  deeply  social  motives;  of  com¬ 
petent  technique  and  ample  volunteer  service. 
The  advocates  of  mothers’  pensions  have  no 
such  carefully  thought  out  program,  or,  if  they' 
\have,  they  have  not  yet  stopped  to  realize  the 
demoralization  that  must  come  to  social  plans 
and  social  results  from  government  per  capita 
grants  that  are  open  to  all  the  objections  ever 
made  against  our  present  pension  system. 

Relief  and  Child  Welfare 

No  attempt  has  been  made  to  keep  to  widows’ 
pensions  in  this  discussion,  because  the  legisla¬ 
tion  already  proposed  in  many  states  goes  far 
beyond  this.  One  publicist  has  said  that  these 
new  pensions  should  be  called  children’s  pen¬ 
sions,  and  this  title  is  the  one,  probably,  which 
most  accurately  describes  their  purpose.  If  the 
pension  bills  introduced  are  passed,  most  of 
them  will  permit  the  present  public  relief  offi¬ 
cials  to  relieve  families  in  which  there  are  chil¬ 
dren,  and  the  pensioning  authority  newly 
created  will  be  expected  to  do  the  same.  Now, 
the  relief  and  oversight  of  children  in  those 
families  which  have  a  male  breadwinner  does 
not  demand  skill  that  is  essentially  different 
from  the  skill  needed  for  the  relief  and  over¬ 
sight  of  families  that  have  no  male  head.  Fam¬ 
ily  problems  and  child-helping  problems  are  in¬ 
volved  in  both  tasks,  and  both  should  be  under¬ 
taken,  whether  at  public  or  at  private  expense, 
by  that  agency  in  each  community  which  is  best 
able  to  secure  good  results. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  many  neglected  chil¬ 
dren  in  their  own  homes  today,  and  both  the 
service  and  the  relief  that  they  are  receiving 
are  pitifully  inadequate  to  their  needs.  The 
claim  is  made  that  it  is  only  more  income  which 
is  needed;  that  personal  service,  supervision, 
continuous  oversight  and  care  are  not  only 
superfluous  but  even  impertinent.  If  individual¬ 
ized  care  is  not  necessary  at  this  point,  if  “case 
work”  has  no  place,  then  we  are  confronted  here 
with  the  solitary  exception  in  the  whole  range 
of  social  endeavor,  in  so  far  as  such  endeavor 
touches  individuals.  Human  beings  are  differ¬ 
ent,  and  to  get  socially  helpful  results  we  have 
to  do  different  things  for  different  people.  The 
dispensaries  and  hospitals  are  discovering  this 
and  are  trying  to  socialize  their  work ;  the  pub¬ 
lic  schools  are  finding  it  out,  in  connection  with 
their  truancy  work,  their  home  and  school  visit¬ 
ing,  their  vocational  guidance,  and  other  activ¬ 
ities.  A  list  of  the  departments  of  human  en¬ 
deavor  that  are  just  waking  up  to  the  fact  that 
they  must  individualize  their  clients  would  fill 
this  page.  None  of  them  has  the  requisite  skill 


3  011 


2  09821 


3702 


as  yet — our  agencies  for  family  rehabilitation 
certainly  have  not,  but  their  workers  cannot  ac¬ 
quire  even  a  modicum  of  the  technique  neces¬ 
sary  for  this  particular  task  without  becoming 
immediately  in  demand  far  beyond  the  boun¬ 
daries  formerly  given  to  social  work.  We  social 
workers  would  welcome  being  put  out  of  busi¬ 
ness  by  the  general  adoption  of  our  program, 
but  we  want  it  adopted  in  full,  and  not  in  frag¬ 
ments. 

I  have  said  that  no  one  remedy  can  meet  the 
need  or  even  relieve  it.  By  those  who  are  will¬ 
ing  to  accept  this  view  and  to  agree  to  a  plan 
of  campaign  in  which  more  adequate  material 
relief  shall  be  made  a  part  of  more  individual¬ 
ized,  more  skilful  and  more  thorough  treatment, 
what  immediate  further  steps  might  be  taken  to 
advance  child  welfare  in  families? 

1.  Community  by  community,  we  must  know 
what  is  happening.  This  is  not  the  place  in 
which  to  present  a  bill  of  particulars,  but  the 
experience  of  the  best  child-helping  and  family 
workers  should  be  utilized  in  drawing  up  and 
making  available  a  series  of  questionnaires  that 
would  help  to  bring  out  the  salient  facts  as  to 
relief  and  family  dependency  in  each  city, 
town,  and  rural  neighborhood. 

2.  The  relation  between  the  conditions  dis¬ 
covered  and  the  campaigns  of  cure  and  preven¬ 
tion  already  launched  in  this  country  should  be 
made  very  clear  indeed,  in  order  that  relief  ad¬ 
ministration  and  its  accompanying  work  for  in¬ 
dividual  families  may  no  longer  be  regarded  as 
an  unimportant  matter  by  a  considerable  group 
of  social  reformers. 

3.  Whatever  undeveloped  resources  for  serv¬ 
ice  exist  in  each  community,  let  us  develop 
them.  If  the  public  agencies  are  carrying  the 
chief  burden  already,  and  carrying  it  with  any 
degree  of  responsibility  and  efficiency,  strength¬ 
en  them,  .aid  them  in  every  way,  work  to  secure 
for  them  more  adequate  resources  in  relief  and 
in  service.  If  the  private  agencies  are  the  chief 
burden  bearers,  do  as  much  for  them. 

4.  Some  places  will  show  very  inefficient 
public  and  very  inefficient  private  care  of  fam¬ 
ilies,  and  an  unaroused  public  sentiment  as  to 
their  needs.  Bombard  the  public  with  facts.  Be 
sure  that  you  have  them  first;  devise  a  reason¬ 
able  program  based  upon  them,  and  then  make 
these  known  by  every  engine  of  publicity,  every 
graphic  means. 

5.  Untiring  work  must  follow.  People  and 
not  surveys  or  exhibits  must  make  things  differ¬ 
ent  by  hard  and  steady  pulling  together.  And 
to  the  solution  of  one  family’s  difficult  problem, 
to  the  safeguarding  of  one  child’s  right  to  health 
and  a  fair  chance,  might  well  be  brought,  in 
contribution,  everything  that  human  ingenuity 
has  devised  or  human  sympathy  has  longed  for. 


